Front page of the #DailyGraphic reads "Judgement Day is here" #TheVerdict #29-08-2013 #Ghana

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Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
TVSTRANGERTHINGS

Love Begins
One Nice Bug Per Day

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shark vs the universe

Product Placement
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taylor price
Claire Keane
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❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
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let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

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@awuraba
Front page of the #DailyGraphic reads "Judgement Day is here" #TheVerdict #29-08-2013 #Ghana
why do you wash your hands like there is no sparkle in this life? daily, soaping and scrubbing until there is blood? i have seen it. seen the difference between the woman who has lines of hard work on her face, and trenches in her palms, and the woman who scrubs to unrecognise herself. we all, at...
There's so much truth in this.
Hiatus.
I'm going blog-crazy over here, subscribing to a million and one incredibly famous blogs (which boast of followers/subscribers in the thousands- so impressive!) like there's no tomorrow. So much, in fact, that I have been reminded about the very thing that makes the success of a blog: consistency (I know, I know. I shouldn't be talking; I have faired poorly in that area *shy face*). If this is any consolation, I tell myself (every time I remember my poor, abandoned blog), that I am such an azaaa writer (try translate that into the queen's english :P)! But after one shocking yet encouraging comment, I figured it's about time I pick up blogging again (after all, this is what's summer is for no?)
I'll attempt to explain my "break" from the bloggosphere. Firstly, fate would really just have it so. I happen to have the most autonomous laptop charger ever. It decides if and when it wants to work, how long it will work for, in what state it will work in etc, affecting, even more, controlling my use of my own laptop. I repeat: my own laptop. Never mind that I'm the human being and it is the object in this relationship. Never mind that I have pampered it for six months, saving it the trouble of commuting to work with me day in, day out. Never mind that it stays in one place for eighteen hours a day doing absolutely nothing but awaiting my return from work to finally be put to use and give some meaning to it's function. Never mind that amidst the few falls I have put it through, it has never been fatally damaged as other chargers in the past. And yet it still functions as it pleases. You understand my frustration. It has meant that for a month, I've been living on borrowed chargers, stealing in-between the times when its users are on a break from it. It means that I have had little drawing me to my computer each day; my preference being for the office laptop, the Toshiba, or my equally problematic phone (between the two, I can't decide which is worse). It means that apart from the most pressing emails, leisure online reading and blogging has taken a drastic fall and has been at it's lowest ever. And although I'm not proud of that and I'd rather it not be so, it is so much easier to just avoid the device than to try and work around it. I'm waiting till I get to the US, to buy one (it's apparently much cheaper there, and it will hopefully be a more permanent and reliable one, I pray).
The other (less valid) reason? Series-watching, which has been super-fun. I finished an entire season of scandal in one weekend, have re-watched Heroes season one to five over the last couple of weeks, done some Suits in between, and I'm now digesting Grey's Anatomy, one of the greatest shows of all time by too many people's recommendations.
That said, things to look forward to for the rest of this summer:
1. More blogging
2. More reading
3. Finishing Grey's and moving on to Game on Thrones (or watching the two simultaneously)
4. Going through a Superhero movie "crash course" (Tufts has an optional course on the superhero movie, so I'm recapping for it, but also for the fun of it)
5. Mastering my photoshop skills and learning a bit more about design.
So little time, so much to do. Wish me luck!
...
Read my Interview with www.africandevelopmentjobs.com here:
http://www.africandevjobs.com/2013/06/africa-at-work-young-african-and.html
Courtesy of (Ms) Nina Oduro, a former educational consultant at the EducationUSA Centre (Ghana) who I had the chance to connect with for only about two weeks, but have kept in touch with ever since.
Check out her amazingly resourceful blog: www.africandevjobs.com
Lover of the Old School (http://www.biography.com)
BIOs has been my main occupation almost all last week. What started off with an MNet Movies late nighter, Ray (2004), got me hungry for more about the legendary music of ‘King of Soul’, Ray Charles Robinson. So after Youtubing a couple of his hits that I already knew, I became curious about his entire life from childhood to the height of his career and started reading about him on this awesome website. Ray Charles turned to the ‘blind prodigy’ Stevie Wonder, then to James Brown-Lionel Richie-‘Queen of Soul’, Aretha Franklin- ‘Queen of Jazz’ Ella Fitzgerald, Chaka Khan- Whitney Houston… the list goes on. I’m such a lover of the ‘old school’, especially old music. I’m amazed at how outstanding these black Artists were in their times, and how much of a mark they made in the history of music. I don’t see the music of today ever comparing (sorry).
I have a strange sense for music that is often triggered at the most random moments. Halfway through a conversation, some words just bring bag memories of random songs and I burst out singing them. I used to chew song lyrics all the time so I really remember words of songs. What this has to do with the entire post?
It reminds me of one of my favorite English HL lessons when our teacher played us a video about the role of music in the Civil Rights Movement, mostly “Negro spirituals” (the term sounds scary, but many of them evolved into much of the black “church” music there is today!). There was one song that stuck to me paa: “Can’t turn me around”- R.O.O.T.S. I sang it all day that day, completely loved it and yet had no clue of how much it meant, how significant it was till this past weekend. EVERYONE should listen to it. It is beautiful music on its own, but was one of the rallying points of the Civil Rights Movement. Listening to this song last week, took me to back to Martin Luther King and, inevitably, back to my BIOs.
I realized how little, really, I knew about this man and how cool, on so many levels, he is. A decade after he was shot, sometime in 1978, a TV miniseries was made about his life. I spent 3 days watching episode after episode (neerd) but it was so compelling. Really made me think. There’s a lot to be said about the merits of “non-violence”. It paid off in the end, though not with out costs which, to a large extent, had to have been born one way or the other. His actions remind me of this bible verse: 1 Corinthians 1:27-29. He really used the (seemingly) foolish approach to shame the wise. I think God put him there for that exact reason. That alone is so cool. He wasn’t the only figurehead, but definitely the one who made the biggest impression on me, hands down.
Anyway, this site has done wonders for me in the past week: added to my oldies playlist/ general knowledge of these celebrated figures, brought back some good memories, hinted at a class I will probably take somewhere during my college years, and increased my appreciation of a great man. My kind of happy week : )
Habakkuk 2:2-3, for those who understand :)
You don’t expect to saddle your dear parents, who have tirelessly contributed their very best to your education through nursery, primary and secondary school, with the news that you’ve suddenly decided to take a year off from school. Not in a Ghanaian home. There is a certain order that only makes sense in their ears, and there is almost no room for “gaps” and “year offs” in their single-minded lingo. That said, it is almost always safe to assume where there is a gap, something unthinkable, even terrible must have gone wrong, somewhere somehow.
Last year I found myself in, let’s just say, a situation I didn’t think I had the heart or the time or the clarity of mind (mpo) to make a decision on. I would either settle on the only school that made me a partial offer or do nothing (at the time, “taking a gap year” wasn’t part of my lingo either) I could figure out just then. As time or maybe fate would have it, I took a year off and the only regrets I have? Having to go through that murderous college application process all over again -_- (Well that’s not a regret per se. To my credit, I am quite an expert at the process now ;))
Yes, you heard it. That college application process is murder, but simultaneously finds a way to get the best out of you. Don’t ever mistaken the undue stress, the drooping eyes, the constant all-nighters and the like on IB2’s faces. It’s a grueling time of hard thinking and deep questioning of what you really want, finding a great fit, making decisions that make most sense etc. but it is not a ‘life and death’ situation. Just like any other process, things can turn out unexpectedly and differently as planned, even to the best of us. Part of the maturity is taking it up in your stride and moving onward. Part of it is accepting that what really counts is not the ‘glory’ in the name of the school you end up in, but what you are able to take and make out of it. Where you end up really doesn’t matter so much as how much you make out of it Now, I’m repeating myself :$ There are so many misconceptions that we must dispel and realities we must face and maybe you are only fully able to understand these things after having gone through the entire process, especially when you had it ‘the hard way’. But there’s room for hope, prayer and faith to believe that things WILL work out fine, even if it takes more time than we budgeted for.
I wish we would just allow things to run its course, and welcome every “gap” in the process in warm embrace. It is almost often ALWAYS (3 words?) worth the wait. It took me a whole year’s wait to land over 5 guaranteed offers and 2 ‘wait lists’ but I got into the school of my first choice (Tufts), and I can hardly explain how overwhelmed I feel.
Habakkuk 2:2-3-“…For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it may linger, wait for it; it will certainly come, and will not delay”
Written for: neverseensnow.blogspot.com
"My First Coup D'état" (John D. Mahama, President of Ghana)
I've been reading this book for about a month now. I like the fact that Mahama writes. He's not an incredible Achebe/Adichie/Atukwei/Wa'Thiongo. He's historical. He's simple, but most importantly, clear. I like the way he weaves the stories of his life into the fabric of the times he lived in. Every chapter is symbolic. Here are a couple of things i'd like to share below:
The "Lost Decades": "I suspect that Africa, as the mother of humankind, has always been and will always be something of an enigma...the key to that mystery must be somewhere in our stories...in the story of its people, its paradoxical simplicity and complexity of our lives"(5).
My First Coup D'état: War is ugly and often has an irreversible, unspeakable effect on a country (and the people within)'s future.
The District Commissioner's Hat: A swat at the air and a hit at anything at all (Paraphrased). If only we'd come to see the 'obroni' as equally human as ourselves, our response would be as natural and un-calculated as it really should be.
Of Silence and Solidarity: Never sit back allow yourself to be "spat on". You have rights and if no one would fight for them, you should. "Ut Umnez Unum Sint" (41). That All May be One.
Wild Lions and Little Boys with Catapults: "It is tempting for us as humans to to believe that we are superior to all other creatures and, as such, have the right to dominate them if and when we so choose"(58)
Full Moon Dance: Madness is just a different kind of normal, that neither deserves our stigma nor our contempt.
How I got my Christian name: Hold on to culture, but more so to faith. Our faith gives us room to question cultural beliefs, and where the two fall into discord, give faith the upper-hand. "It's our culture" is barely a valid excuse.
Sankofa: "Se wo were fi na wosankofa, yenkyi" (110), a Ghanaian proverb that translates to "if you have forgotten and you go back and get it, it is not a taboo". Home calls, and it's never too late to respond to the call.
Teenagers in Tamale: In the season of politics and song, "One day you're up, but the next you might be down". Change, although awfully scary, is inevitable.
Frozen Fire: Two heads, or in the case of Taka, Tika and Gangale three heads, are ALWAYS better than one. There is strength in our numbers.
Praise for the Powerful: "When the applause is loudest, remember to leave" (167) or risk getting swallowed up in your complacency and reversing the very feats that won you applause in the first place.
Union Government: When you step on a people's toes for long enough, i bet you, they will soon bite back. And it will not be pleasant.
Truth Stands:"...and he that will reach her, about must and about must go, and what the hill's suddenness resists, win so" (202)
Perilous Crossings: In the hands of many at the top, power is like a toy to be played around with and explored, often to the detriment of the innocent. Honestly, "when the applause is loudest, REMEMBER to leave."
Ghana Must Go: The hilarious origins of this statement and the fact that leaving is almost never the solution to the problems at home.
Providence: Everyone should be a better communicator.
Tovarisch: Our philosophies are always questioned in the environment of the exact opposite.
CODA: Return of hope...Anaa? An 'anaa?', 'is that not so?', or invitation for doubt, for a contradictory opinion is ALWAYS welcome.
*There's plenty to learn from and enjoy about this book.
Drivers, Driving in Ghana and my DVLA woes.
I have never really liked the thought of having a driver. Sure, it was super convenient for us four kids at home because my mummy and daddy obviously couldn’t juggle school parties, trips to the mall, visits to friend’s houses all in one Saturday. Not with their million and one funerals that came with ever Saturday, extended market trips, Full Gospel appearances etc. So having a driver made perfect sense.
But for me it soon became more of a frustration than a luxury. Like the rebel fleur that I was, I hated leaving the party so early, being the first one out after a sleepover or leaving home as soon as the bell rang. What kind of life was I supposed to have? So I made myself hard-to-find, stalled for hours on hours… I used to get on Mr. Paul’s nerves (I’m like his worst out of all my siblings and I know he just hates having to take me anywhere. Even now)!
So then came the age of 18, a valid excuse to my parents that I could start learning how to drive; never mind how long it took to even get me into driving school (and no matter what you tell me, I will retain that I went to the worst! Ato is my witness). Even then, my prospects of driving on my own were going to take muuuch longer than I was hoping.
Can I just digress for a moment to ask-what is the point of driving school anyway? I know I didn’t have a clue about how to move a car after I graduated last year, the thought of Mr. Paul teaching me was more than unlikely (when I brought up the topic, he used to laugh. Hmm), and no one was going to have the time to teach me so driving school made sense. But to pay almost 400GHS for three weeks of the SAME classes (its either we were reciting road signs or doing a quiz in which the same questions were being asked to the five of us in the classroom…if someone gets it right, you’re set. How can you fail?), practical sessions with the moodiest driving instructor who barely took me out of Dzorwulu (how much practice will you ever have?)… I can’t say it was worth it. I finished McAshley in November and my driving wasn’t any better. And in three months I was supposed to turn up for a driving test? I learnt everything after driving school, on my own with Mr Isaac (Grandma’s driver/best bogger ever!)
Anyway between the end of driving lessons and the test, I still had to wear the “L” plate AND have a driver in the car. A Learners plate is just a curse. It automatically gave anyone on the road the excuse to overtake you, honk the minute you stopped and comment, sometimes pitifully, other times harshly, telling you either to ‘go home and sleep’ or ‘learn hard, okay’. (So annoying!) Suddenly policemen became a little more aware of you, and would come over and start asking your age (apparently I look really young) or to see your license and that of the accompanying driver. Once a policeman and tried to argue with me over driving with anyone other than a supervisor from a recognized driving school (which means that no one, between driving school and the test, can ever drive because you’d most likely be out of driving school.
After a while, I couldn’t be bothered. I stopped wearing the “L” plate and gone were most of my woes. I missed my driving test in December because of work, and so I ended up having to reschedule the test. Guess what test date the graceful DVLA gave me? 26th April. Four good months away. “Toooooon”! It seems like nothing now that it’s just passed, but it means that from January till yesterday I’ve been stuck with my learners-license-have-to-be-accompanied-by-a-driver-police-vulnerability. I thank God April finally arrived, and I took my test yesterday (or something like that).
So this week, I reread all my driving books cause I have heard a lot of people fail the test (and no, the number of ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’s, many of which NEVER took test, on the street are not a reflection of how “easy” the test is). I went in to take the test, and the test was taken for me. The invigilator starts off by signing in for me and I thought he was just helping me set up so I left it at that. Before I knew it, he was answering the test questions. Within five minutes he is done and tells me to come for my practical on Monday. I don’t even know what to say about it. DVLA is clearly corrupt but I can’t even say it without sounding like a hypocrite since I benefited from it.
ANYWAY, after Monday all this wahala will end.
Intelligence is golden.
this entire society,
this greener grass on the other side
to which tons of people the world over flock
in search of better opportunities they believe they will so desperately find
and realize their fantasies of living the age-old "American dream",
is built on it.
Even more,
is hanging on it.
In these very moments;
the secrets behind this haunting week of deathly silence,
and an entire city brought to shut down,
the precious many lives that are no longer with;
is the gold that the questioning minds of us the curious and engaged
will spend the next few twenty four hours ploughing at.
This gold mine of one man's intelligence
"I hope you know that now that you have a blog, you have to do a birthday post for us"
(Pressure!) This is not a birthday post. Otherwise, I’d be 48 hours late without good enough reason…
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"I hope you know that now that you have a blog, you have to do a birthday post for us"
(Pressure!) This is not a birthday post. Otherwise, I'd be 48 hours late without good enough reason and Audrr would have blasted me by now. This is just a toast to two of the most amazing people I have ever known and will forever be grateful for, my realest homies, loves, only triplets (yes, I've been forskinning their 4/13 swag), niggers, pressure guys!!, and friends to say the least. Cheers to the many good times we have and are yet to share together (Cape Three Points--Audessh ;). This is just to say I LOVE YOU BOTH!
Here's hoping that in the not too distant future, the misfortunes of Fantine will only be found in stories and not in real life.
-Anne Hathaway
please follow the link below to view the budget (and other details) and to donate:
http://www.gofundme.com/2g77zw
Thank you! God bless you and please help us DISABLE THE LABEL!
Efua :*
Support the DISLABELLED initiative now! Contribute some funds http://www.gofundme.com/2g77zw before April 29th!
Tonight I can write the (happiest) lines
(Title: borrowed from one of Pablo Neruda's poems I never got the chance to study)
Write for example, that I'm not violently smacking against my poor thighs in random, haphazard manner trying to sap these infinitely small, yet lethal parasites flying around me in the darkness.
or that for the first time in a long, long time I am falling asleep against the backdrop of the still, calm night air, and on the other end, our overused, power-guzzling generator is finally at rest (for about a week now)
Write for example, that if I fall asleep tonight and do not manage to power through these menacing essays and the deadlines looming behind them, I can plan to postpone them to tomorrow, and (I can safely say), even tomorrow next.
or that I have not had to spend over an hour over the phone in frustration with internet service providers' customer service personnel, begging for some reasonable explanation to why my non-refundable, paid internet has not worked for over a week.
Tonight I can write that I am quite optimistic about the government's promise to assure that come the end of April, this inconvenience of an energy crisis which should have been buried back in 2006, will come to its sad end.
Tonight I can write that I am happier than when the year first began and I pray that all that have been 2013's woes, so far, will soon be no more.
Is load-shedding over? I haven't had "light off" in well over a week now, so much so that "light off" hasn't been on my mind in a while. What about all Vodafone's internet issues? I know we've switched to another ISP, but I haven't heard of the strikes that were such a commonplace thing nearing the end of last year. I didn't experience much of the water shortages (I barely spend enough time at home, so I don't know how badly it affected Tesano), but I listen to the radio every blessed day, and its been a while since I heard people lodge complaints.
This is a call for celebration, no? I think my happiness is justified.
This Natural Hair 'fad'...
Transitioning to natural hair is becoming even more and more of a cliché; so much so that my writing of this post will seem most ironic after you find out that I just cut out my perm, and went fully natural just recently (gasp). It's not that big of a deal, really, except that its being made so unnecessarily. Natural hair is being positioned in the most exaggerated ways: as a reclamation of 'black beauty', a means of emphasising ones 'African'-ness embracing one's African heritage and the like, when frankly, like my GIS friends would say, "it's not that deep".
I do understand where the identity crisis among some African American, for whom natural hair was (and possibly still is) their claim to their African heritage. As history would have it, the 60's were known as the period of "Reclamation of Beauty", when black people in America began to contend a beauty that was defined by hair texture (straight, long, flowy, wavy), and the like. A novel like 'The Bluest Eye' by Toni Morrison so clearly depicts the influence the times had on 11-year old main character, Pecola Breedlove. It's not an entirely African-American thing. Even in Nazi Germany, you would see hints of this similar trend in Nazi-defined standards of Aryan (considered the purest race) beauty: Blond, curly hair, blue eyes, pointed nose, high cheek bones etc. Their ideals were probably worse. This is only to show that the still existent identity crisis problem has context. A context that may have had some bearing on some of the responses I got when I first told my dad and oldest brother, both strong proponents of straight, long hair, I wanted to go natural: Why you too, you are joining this black movement? (Paraphrased) Just to clarify, my brother has been teasing about being all about Africa out of the bloom, and calling me "Mama Africa" and things. -__-
Anyway he pointed out probably the most important thing in this discussion: the motives. Is the reason for going natural any different from choosing to have braids over putting a weave on? Because if some people think that they will find a better sense of their African-ness in a kink over their perm, they are looking in the wrong places. I know it seems like a thing of the past, but there ARE still people turning to natural hair for that reason. Let me share a tweet I found on my TL last week: "We're not African merely because we were born in Africa. We are African because Africa was born in us". The first part of the sentence could easily be replaced with the texture we chose to leave our hair. There doesn't even need to be a reason, but if there is, it should at least be valid.
If you're waiting to hear my reason, here goes: I used to go crazy over T.Y. Bello's and Esi Aida's (in the pictures below) hair. I have never had natural hair in my life. I went from 'sakora' to permed hair. JUST LIKE THAT. My front hair was weak. I didn't want to end up like half my aunties, hiding under wigs before they even turned 50. Got tired of adding extensions.I couldn't really be bothered. Now when I put my hand on my head, there's so little hair its almost scary. But I can say I've never felt this free before. My last reason? I like it this way. That's all.